King Boxer tribute thread

Panchyprsss · Dec 2, 2018

Of the old school seventies martial arts films, the Bruce Lee movies the ones that usually comes to mind. But there is a non-Bruce Lee film that was highly influential, pioneering and remains a genre's classic: 1972's King Boxer aka Five Fingers of Death and also The Invincible Boxer. This was a Run Run Shaw production from his Shaw Bros Studio which even in the 70s did business the old Hollywood studios style: they will hire actors, directors, writers, crew members with exclusive long term contracts and they would film as many movies simultaneously in a short time span in their studio lot sets. It was because of this tight system that Sir Run Run Shaw missed the boat in signing Bruce Lee, who didn't want to tied to a long contract for multiple films for a weekly salary. While Shaw lost Bruce Lee to rival Golden Harvest, he hit gold with 'King Boxer', a film that not only did great business in Asia, but was the first kung fu film to go mainstream in Western countries a whole good year before Bruce Lee's 'Enter The Dragon' conquered the world.

But there is more to this film than its financial success. Even by the then Hong Kong standards it had a series of achievements not seen in the genre at that time. Initially Mr. Shaw wanted to make this film fast, but had all his Chinese directors already working on other films, so he hired a Korean director, Chang Hwa Jeong, who found the story very average at best, but yet saw it as a challenge to make something different. At that time Shaw Studios was releasing a new kung fu film every week, so there wasn't much time or desire to make the current ones filming that much different from what worked in the previous ones. Many of the actors were used simultaneously in other films, using the same sets and even the same clothes! The directors were merely calling the shots for cuts and the martial arts choreographers pretty much kept repeating the same techniques. Jeong also had that find his own kung fu choreographer since all the others were already booked. So he hired a newbie young choreographer who worked closely with him and the editor. Jeong wanted to stay away from the excessive use of wires and fantastical prowess of Shaw's biggest moneymaking films like 'One Armed Boxer' aka "The Chinese Professionals" and went instead for fast cuts in editing, use of powder when punches hit, close-ups of strikes like on headbutts, eyes strikes, etc. Even though he left the basic plot untouched, he did added more depht to the story with subplots surrounding the secondary characters. Also his choreographer took the task of teaching kung fu techniques to the main actor, Lo Lieh, who wasn't a martial artist at all. Lo Lieh became an action star after this film and made many kung fu films afterwards. The film also features the debut of a young muscular Shotokan karate black belt, Yang Sze aka Bolo Yeung in a minor yet memorable role that lead him to be cast as Bolo in Enter The Dragon.

The sound effects and particularly the use of the intro Quincy Jones 'Ironside theme' during the Iron Palm scenes was a genius move that even Tarantino paid homage to in his Kill Bill films.

While it might look dated today, the film remains engaging and entertaining. 'King Boxer' is a martial arts classic that deserves more recognition by today's film buffs.

original HK poster

Its first international poster

In many countries it was retitled 'The Invincible Boxer' (this was the version I watched). It had my favorite tagline: "He challenged champions in a deadly sport that turned brave men into killers."

Five Fingers of Death released in USA by Warner Bros

Panchyprsss · Dec 2, 2018

Rare Italian poster that gives away the ending!!!

This character was one of the director's additions. An anti-hero that starts as a villain, but by the ed has a change of heart.